


You Are What You Love (Golden Like Daylight)

by sweeterthankarma



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Season/Series 03, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, loving Adena El-Amin is a religious experience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25460659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: They’ve only been doing this for about two months— this polyamorous triadic multi-partnered thing that Kat can’t seem to really wrap her mind around despite the fact that it’s now her new reality— but it already feels like the best decision she’s ever made.
Relationships: Kat Edison/Adena El-Amin, Tia Clayton/Adena El-Amin, Tia Clayton/Kat Edison, Tia Clayton/Kat Edison/Adena El-Amin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20





	You Are What You Love (Golden Like Daylight)

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this when season 3 ended last summer and forgot about it until recently, but it was a delight to rekindle and finish up! I'm pretending that this is canon, or at least that Adena and Kat got back together right after 4x06 because I refuse to see anything past that as canon. I'll forever love this show and its characters, but I'm going to be honest, it's become a raging dumpster fire. Kat Edison deserves better. Adena El-Amin deserves better. And Tia Clayton deserves better too. I hope she's living a thriving life off screen as a newly out and happy lesbian. Meanwhile, in the universe this fic exists in, she finds love in our beloved Kadena, which is honestly the ultimate dream. And Kadena fans, I love us. We all deserve better too.
> 
> Title comes from the song "Daylight" by Taylor Swift.

They’ve only been doing this for about two months— this polyamorous triadic multi-partnered thing that Kat can’t seem to really wrap her mind around despite the fact that it’s now her new reality— but it already feels like the best decision she’s ever made.

It feels weird that Kat wanted this, even weirder that she likes it, and weirdest that it’s working. She’s happy, abundantly so, and so are Adena and Tia. No one’s killed each other yet or even had a substantial argument, so she’d call it a win.

Really, it’s like heaven for her.

She gets to fall in love with Adena all over again at the same time she watches Adena and Tia fall in love, and somehow because of it she finds herself falling even more in love with Tia. It’s so much love at all times, overwhelming in the best way possible, and she finds herself in a perpetual state of swooning, especially at times when she shouldn’t be, like last week when both Adena and Tia came to bring her lunch and she got far too distracted by kissing them when she should have been focusing on a staff meeting she had in forty minutes.

The amount of affection and appreciation seeping from Adena and Tia has transformed Kat far more than she’d ever expected for herself— hell, she used to think she couldn’t even handle having  _ one _ partner— but she’ll be the first to admit how good it makes her feel. It may be unconventional, taboo in some circles or even deemed wrong by others, but Kat’s never cared much for other people’s expectations, anyway. This love has become everything she needs and can’t imagine being without, and she’s not too worried about much else.

Being back in Adena’s orbit feels like home. She’s familiar and soft and as warm as she’s always been, but she’s insistent and stern when she needs to be. She calls Kat out— and Tia too, especially when she’s too afraid to listen to herself, to her truth. Kat complains, but it’s refreshing, makes her see every day with brand new eyes. Tia just looks at Adena like she holds all of the knowledge and truth in the universe, and Kat can’t blame her, doesn’t think that’s an entirely incorrect belief to have. 

“You’re a lesbian,” Adena had said to Tia one night, long before they were even thinking of each other as more than friends. It had surprised Kat that not only could she manage being mere friends with both Adena and Tia while being single and focusing on herself, but that her two exes became instant companions with each other. Kat had no doubts in her mind as to why they were drawn to each other— after all, she’s experienced each of their personal, unavoidable magnetisms firsthand— but it was certainly unexpected to observe both of them dive deep into their sexual psychology on their third night hanging out. 

“Based on what I know about you, what you feel, and what you’ve told me, though it’s not too much, I would think that you’re a lesbian,” Adena had continued, almost therapuetic. Tia had nodded, _ definitely  _ interpreting it that way. 

“Please correct me if I’m wrong,” Adena had assured, tender as ever. “Don’t let me overstep, I would never try to tell you who you are.”

But Tia kept nodding until tears sprung in her eyes and she fought them back but didn’t need to. Adena was by her side, understanding and gentle as Kat watched in silent appreciation what unfolded next. 

Adena had led them to the balcony and they stood, two dark figures against the bright city sky. Kat felt like she was watching something miraculous unfold, something almost surreal.

“Tell the world who you are,” Adena had whispered to her like a prayer, like a mission. “Tell the world who  _ we  _ are.”

When they’d finally backed away from the edge of the night, throats sore from happy screaming, giddy and eager and childish in all the best ways, Tia’s face had been streaked with happy tears. She moved different, like she was changed, vivid with relief, and she held Adena’s hand tight in her own for a long, long time after that. 

“I think that was a religious experience for her,” Kat told Adena later while walking to the nearest train station, heading in the same direction home. She found that she was only half-joking.

“It was for me when I first figured it out, too,” is all Adena says by way of reply, and that was the first time Kat had an idea of what the three of them could be.

The first month into dating— all of them together, that is, as there had been another open relationship trial before it that had just been plain awkward— Tia comes home to her apartment with a rainbow flag big enough to be a tablecloth and an unwavering grin. Adena is the first to envelop her in a hug, followed by Kat, who already has a step stool and tacks in her arms, ready to hang it up on the wall behind her bed.

“I’m so in love with you,” is the first thing Kat says when she wakes up one morning, standing with a stretch and leaving the comfy haze of the bedroom to settle into a cushioned seat at the kitchen table. Adena stands before her, pouring tea while Tia munches off a plate of fruit and toast, and she passes it to Kat like she isn’t taken aback by her words. In a way, she isn’t. Neither is Adena. 

They both hear it so often, but usually with some sort of provocation. Today, Kat says it matter-of-factly, like it’s nothing, like she’s commenting on the weather or the fact that her favorite skirt needs to be ironed. She beams, smiles so brightly, child-like and honest and clearly a little surprised by herself and her brazenness, but she’s absolutely not regretful. 

“I’m so in love with both of you,” she corrects, taking in the sight of both of them, messy haired and bleary eyed and still sort of half asleep, but gorgeous all the same. Perfect.  _ Hers.  _

Kat thinks about that moment on the balcony a lot. She thinks about Adena a lot, and about Tia too, of course, and under any other circumstances, this would be ruining her, making her more distracted and flighty and convinced that she wasn’t fit to love. Now though, she feels exactly the opposite. Adena and Tia are making her  _ better.  _

She’s a better lover, a better Scarlet employee, a better activist and a better person overall thanks to them. She thinks she could go on forever about the ways that she feels about them, but she tries to keep it concise, tries to make bulleted lists in her head so that when her parents ask about her girlfriends, she knows just what to say. 

And her parents being supportive are just about the icing on the cake, because Tia’s out to her parents but not about having two partners, as the simple statement on her sexuality was already enough to end an evening with a slammed phone and a guilty redial that occurred later. Tia doesn’t pause when saying the word “girlfriend” now, but she still visibly straightens every time she does, both out of discomfort and knowledge that things would be so much worse if the full truth was revealed, if she added an  _ s  _ onto that word. 

Adena’s always the best at comforting her at these times. She knows what both Tia and Kat need, inherently and almost as instinctually as she knows for herself, and she calibrates their clarity, providing peace and sternness in just the right degrees. She’s giving and sentimental but assured and independent, and there’s still so much more that Kat wants to learn from her. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop wanting to know her deeper and fuller, to her very core.

It’s clear that Tia feels the same. She worships Adena in a far better way than Kat ever could, less messy, more honed. It’s what she deserves, honestly, because Kat’s never been good with words, never been able to find the right way to act, certainly not at the right place and the right time. Tia isn’t perfect either, but she’s honest when she’s flustered— which is rather often because Adena is, well,  _ Adena—  _ and Tia manages to be exuberant even when she’s overwhelmed. She’s so sweet it’s almost too much sometimes. It’s all new to her, not only loving girls but loving  _ two  _ girls, and while the butterflies have never really gone away for Kat or Adena, the kind that Tia experiences are a completely different species, unlike anything she’s ever experienced in her twenty plus years of life. 

“Been there,” Kat says when Adena says something sexy in Farsi and Tia’s jaw honest to god  _ drops.  _

When Adena does anything, really, that’s how they react. 

Kat thinks that’s her favorite thing about loving both of them: getting to share the same experiences. Adena knows the curve of Tia’s hips, the softness of her thighs and the ticklishness of the backs of her knees just as Kat does. Tia knows Adena’s favorite junk food— Hippeas chips, the Sriracha Sunrise flavor that the bodega on her street corner never has in stock— and so she always makes the effort, just as Kat does, to walk all the way to 6th Ave just to buy her the family size bag, sometimes three bags in a week if she’s feeling extra sappy. And it doesn’t take special occasions for Adena to cook for her girlfriends, especially not when they both coincidentally share the same favorite meal of Adena’s home recipes  _ and _ it has the shortest cooking time out of all of them. 

Adena knows Kat better than she thinks anyone ever has, though Tia’s a close second. Tia is so smart, so attentive, so vulnerable to those she loves, and god, is she good in bed. If Kat is being honest with herself, she’s a little surprised by it. She knows she certainly wasn’t amazing herself when she had sex for the first time, not with a boy and certainly not with a girl, but Tia had been almost effortless. Still shy, still unsure but always trying and determined, and she’d done far more than succeeded with both her girlfriends.

Adena kisses and touches and loves with the same sureness that had made Kat weak from the moment they’d first gotten tangled up like this, and she’ll never forget the taste of her, especially when she’s engulfed in it nearly every day. It’s blissful, all-encompassing, the most gloriously overwhelming experience, and it always ends in her orgasm, and usually Tia’s too. Tia can come just by watching them sometimes, and Kat thinks she could come just by that knowledge alone.

Kat doesn’t think there’s anything more painful than having to go in to work on a Saturday while Adena and Tia lounge in her bed, legs intertwined, Adena already pulling Tia’s panties down her thighs and shoving a hand in between. If they both didn’t hold Kat so accountable, keep her motivated and never let her do anything halfway— even the things that don’t really matter, like today’s monthly required paperwork— she’d have called in sick, or maybe not even bothered to. She’d probably just get sucked right back into bed, into her lovers embrace, and forgotten about the world for hours on end. 

But Kat loves herself now too, just as much as she loves them, so she does what she knows she should and goes to work, though not without demanding that they keep her updated with sexy texts and photos. It’s a joke and all three of them know it, yet they follow through with some mildly sensual messages and a blurry photo of Adena’s bra in Tia’s hands, barely recognizable and hardly considered to be a nude. It still makes Kat’s heart hammer in her chest when she opens it in the elevator at Safford, and she thanks god for her dedication when she gets off at Scarlet’s floor and greets Jacqueline with a neutral, unassuming face.

Later, Kat will come home and let Adena and Tia drape her against the shower wall, rock their fingers against the space between her thighs until she’s done, come at least twice and let loose with a shivering sigh and long awaited relief. She’ll turn her attention back to shaving before the water turns cold, and even when it does, she doesn’t change the words in her mind, ringing true, repeating over and over: this is heaven. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please let me know! Comments and kudos make my day. Come talk to me on Tumblr [here](https://sweeterthankarma.tumblr.com/)


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